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About Richard Hay

Richard is the Owner/Editor of WindowsObserver.com and has been involved in tech for over 30 years.
His first website – AnotherWin95.com – came online in 1995. Back then he used GeoCities Web Hosting for it and what you see here today is the result of the work he has continued on the site since 1995.
In January 2010 his community contributions were recognized by Microsoft when he was awarded the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award for Windows Desktop Experience. In January 2011 he was renewed as a Microsoft MVP but in a new category called Windows Expert - Consumer. In early 2016 he was moved into a new award category - Windows and Devices for IT and was also designated as a Windows Insider MVP as of 01 July 2016.
In January 2015 he began contributing to the SuperSite for Windows, Windows IT Pro and Developer Pro sites for Penton technology.

This just shows the anti-competitive nature of Apple. Nokia and Windows Phone (Microsoft) don’t need Hopstop, we already have Nokia Transit which does an excellent job of this. Developers of similar apps already on the Apple Ecosystem now face the prospect that their apps will be removed from the App Store because Apple reserves the right to do that to apps which compete with their own features on their platform. Why anyone develops for them is beyond me.

I agree. Just wish they had warned users of its impeding closure. That is a much better public policy compared to just taking it down unannounced and then also keeping the Android app up and available. That makes it look intentional and targeted.

So this story has been picked up on Reddit under technology and Windows Phone and seems to be gaining some traction there. The majority of commenters do not agree with Apple pulling this tactic unannounced.

This was specifically an app that has existed for well over a year on the WP platform, was available for all current versions (WP7, WP7.5 and WP8) and was happily being offered for WP users until this purchase by Apple happened. Then without warning they pulled the app. No grace period for users to move off, etc.

Well of course people don’t agree. But Apple is looking after itself. At the end of the day they need to bring products to their brand and make it exclusive. THey are not selling your data as Google for ad revenue. If in the course of making a product exclusive for Apple users they ruin Windows/Android users experience on their platform, they couldn’t care less. At the end of the day each company is looking after itself and their own users. Microsoft/Nokia should have bought HopStop for themselves if they cared that much.

If your plan is to incorporate this map data into your map app on iOS and not have it as a separate app then shutting down the apps make sense but why only shutdown Windows Phone? Why not the other mobile apps as well?

Well, OK — to be fair, beginning in 2012 it’s you and the vocal majority of MS fans who are so aggressively, angrily paranoid about the supposed unfairness of MS’s two main competitors in the mobile sector.

For an outside observer, this current stance contrasts nicely with the same group’s quiet complacency during the _decade_ that WIntel was (literally) extorting support from firms in multiple sectors, worldwide.

Maybe HS had only a single WP dev, who’s quit or been reassigned for the iOS merge. I don’t know for sure…do you? Likewise, suspicions aside I can’t say why MS have repeatedly delayed Office for iPad or Android.